


in a hundred years

by witticaster



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: F/M, also feat. Magnus trying to express love through carpentry, and Julia being very good at seeing through bullshit, elf!Julia, kind of a spiritual echo of some of his canon issues, not really a plot point but I figured I should tag it so others like myself can seek elf content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-31
Updated: 2017-12-31
Packaged: 2019-02-24 12:25:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,315
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13213719
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/witticaster/pseuds/witticaster
Summary: Magnus builds a gazebo. or rather, tries to.





	in a hundred years

**Author's Note:**

  * For [pyrrhlc](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pyrrhlc/gifts).



> a wintertime present for pyrrhlc, who wanted something with elf!Julia, a headcanon I think we all need to take into our hearts and souls

The summertime finds Magnus getting up at the crack of dawn and going to bed with splintery hands, but he doesn't mind. He wants it to be this way. 

Maybe he should be focusing on working for profit, or trying to develop his weaker carpentry skills, or even agreeing to be the new governor of Raven's Roost, like everyone keeps asking about. None of that sounds as good as dripping sweat all over the fresh cedar planks he's nailed down. 

The base of the gazebo goes down quickly enough; Julia helps him hammer the planks down, and to test it out, they dance across it long after midnight, keeping the rhythm with the thuds of their footfalls. The stairs are easy, too. He decides for just one staircase, because he wants it closed off from everything else. 

The problems start to come when Magnus sets up the posts. He's measured everything out exactly, but once he has all of them in place, he stands back and frowns. 

They're not tall enough. 

He checks the numbers on Julia's blueprints, re-measures the posts themselves, and frowns; he got it right. But when he looks at the sketch, he sees posts that reach much higher, arcing upwards, out of sight. He's too tired to figure it out and goes home, shrugging a little when Julia asks him how everything is coming along. 

"Problems?" she asks, turning his hands over in hers, tapping on calluses. 

"Kind of," he says. "I think I just need to sleep on it."

In the morning, he gets up, splashes water on his face, and returns to the build site. He scratches at his sideburns and tears the posts down.

After that, it keeps happening. The roof he builds seems too flat, and the rafters he lays out are at awkward angles. He doesn't even need to look at Julia's blueprint anymore, he knows it by heart and mutters the numbers to himself again and again. 

Julia figures him out sooner than he'd like, before he figures out why he can't get it right. "Do you want me to give you a hand tomorrow morning?" she asks over dinner.

"No," he says, too quickly.

She raises an eyebrow. There's a scar over it, still a little pink, from an army dirk that got too close. "You sure? I could use something to do; I've been sorting out Dad's sales books for weeks now, and even though he's managed to make it a challenge, it'd be good to get my hands dirty."

"No, I- I want to surprise you."

"How about you tell me what's up with you, instead?"

She can't see it yet. Not until he figures it out.

"Jules, I just need a little more time to finish it, okay?" he says. "Can you give me some time?"

Julia blows a dramatic raspberry. "Okay, but I'm starting to get a little tired of making up excuses when people ask me what the wedding date is." She pokes a finger into his bicep. "You better work fast."

He smiles, tucking her hair behind her pointed ear. "It'll be done before you know it."

It's not. 

Summer stretches long, but on the first cool day, he's still painstakingly hammering shingles into place, stopping after each one to hop down from the roof and see if he got it right. People stop hassling Julia and start hassling him, whistling wedding songs whenever they see him. He always gives them a grin, but feels his pulse pounding too fast in his ears. He has to figure it out, and soon.

For her part, Julia gives him the time, only asking gentle questions about how the day went when he comes home. He sputters out guilty answers about his progress and says he's tired -- which he is, but it's not just from working all day.

Steven eventually asks when he can expect his partner back in business, and when he can expect that partner to become his son-in-law. 

"I've almost got it," says Magnus, trying to rub the hurt out of the finger he bruised this afternoon. “I’m sorry, I’m doing my best, I just need a little more time to make sure it’s perfect.”

"Are you marrying the gazebo, or my daughter?" Steven smiles.

"You don't have to answer that, babe," says Julia. “I’m not the jealous type.” She swats Steven with one of the poorly-written receipts she's trying to file.

He thinks he's bought himself a little more time, but the next morning, he opens his eyes to a fully-dressed Julia kissing his forehead to wake him up. "Good morning," she says. "I think we should take a walk."

"Where to?" he says. God, he's never sounded more evasive in his life. 

"I think you know," she says.

They hold hands as they walk together in the pre-dawn light. He's sure she can feel his palm sweating, but she doesn't say anything about it, just resting her temple against his arm at intervals. When they reach it, the big, shambled skeleton of a gazebo, he lets go, running his fingers through his hair.

"Shit," he mutters.

"Magnus, it's-" She tries to turn him to face her, but when he resists, she circles around and looks him directly in the eye. "Magnus, you've got to know how good it is. You're too good of a carpenter not to."

"It's not right," he says.

"Well, what would make it right?"

"I don't know," he says. "It's just- It's not what it should be."

"What should it be?"

"I don't know!" His voice cracks on the last word. He doesn't want to think about it anymore, he kind of just wants to smash it and start the whole thing over, but a little voice in his head that sounds remarkably like Julia knows that she has a point. 

"I just want it to be great," he says, after a moment. "Not good, not okay. I want to come back here in a hundred years and I want it to look the same. I want it to be like- I want it to be like I feel about you." It would feel stupid to say that to anyone else. It would feel stupid to think it in front of anyone else.

"I get that." She smiles a little. "And don't get me wrong, I'm pretty flattered. But it's so, so good, Magnus. You could keep working on it as long as you want, but -- I'm sorry to tell you this -- I would feel the same about it no matter what it looked like. Because you made it. And I really like you."

"I like you, too," he mumbles back, feeling his smile in his cheeks.

"And Magnus?" She grabs his chin. "I'm getting really sick of not being married to you."

He finishes it up that day. They paint it together. 

The wedding happens within the week, because Julia has covertly been arranging things behind the scenes. The morning of the wedding, he swings by the gazebo again, knocking his knuckles against the beams, running his fingers along the crown molding, stepping on each plank and stair to test for creakiness. 

But when he's trying to get his vows out while looking down at the woman who is almost his wife -- a smiling elven woman with radiant copper skin and little yellow flowers dotting through her hair, who only said "liar" when he promised he wouldn't cry today -- he barely notices where he is. Maybe it finally looks like it feels, or feels like it looks. Something like that, probably. 

He doesn't come back to it in a hundred years, because it falls to ruin when Kalen bombs Raven's Roost. Sometimes he thinks he should rebuild it, but the older he gets, the more he realizes that it isn't really necessary. 

It's the same. It will always be the same.


End file.
